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Just about everyone, it seems, wants to see his best buddy as secretary of the Treasury, one of the most influential positions in government. Industrialists, bankers, and Wall Street all want one of their own in the office when Timothy Geithner steps down, which he's expected to do after an agreement is reached on cutting the federal budget deficit. That's why President Barack Obama is receiving more wish-list letters than Santa Claus.

The most likely candidates have few ties to Wall Street. With the public still smarting from the 2008 financial crisis, most Street executives would at best face an uphill battle for the position. The last three Treasury chiefs, in contrast, have been Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson, both from Goldman Sachs, and Geithner, who as president of the New York Fed worked closely with big financial firms.

SO WHO'S LEFT? Jack Lew, the current White House chief of staff and a former director of the president's Office of Management and Budget under both Obama and President Clinton, looks like the clear front-runner. Obama relies heavily on a small inner circle of advisors, and Lew is a key member of that cadre. Wall Street's major trade associations expect Lew to be the next Treasury chief, as do Democratic insiders in Washington.

Lew, 57, has been in government for most of his life, initially serving on the staff of Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, the storied Democratic House speaker from Massachusetts, during the Carter and Reagan administrations. The National Journal once called Lew "the ultimate Beltway insider."

Republican lawmakers, however, could bristle at a Lew nomination. Lew has been Obama's go-to budget expert and is one of the president's chief negotiators in the contentious fiscal-cliff talks with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. In 2011, when Obama tried to reach a grand bargain with Boehner in talks about the nation's debt ceiling, the GOP leader considered Lew so inflexible that he asked the president to sideline him.

Lew also has a Wall Street skeleton in his closet. He left Washington in 2006 and joined Rubin at Citigroup just before the economic bust. He ran the banking company's alternative trading desk, which successfully bet against mortgages -- just as the public was losing its shirt. At the same time, the group lost hundreds of millions on an esoteric collection of investments -- and still received seven-figure bonuses.

Lew's brief stint on the Street sticks in the craw of the many Democrats who believe that the Obama administration wasn't aggressive enough in investigating the collapse of the credit system. So Lew isn't a slam-dunk candidate.

THAT'S WHY OTHER CANDIDATES are still in the hunt. One possibility is for Obama to name the first female Treasury secretary. Remember, the president heavily courted the female vote in his run for a second term, and women delivered, big-time, for him. Eventually, he must deliver something big in return. The symbolism would be huge if Obama were to have a woman crash the Treasury boys' club.

Laura D'Andrea Tyson, director of the National Economic Council under Clinton, would be an obvious candidate. Tyson, who is a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, is a top economist with exceptional political skills, an unusual combination of attributes.

Mary J. Miller, undersecretary of the Treasury for domestic finance, is another possible successor to Geithner. She is a top talent who until recently was unknown to most of the public. Miller, who was a mutual-fund and fixed-income expert at the T. Rowe Price Group for 26 years, was floated by the administration as a possible successor to Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro, who is leaving this month. But Miller said she didn't want the post. It could be that she has a loftier goal.

At the Treasury, Miller not only manages the nation's debt, she is one of the top experts on securities reform and banking. In other words, if left home alone, she could run the place. She also is a well-known, highly respected figure on Capitol Hill. Miller is the person Geithner dispatches when Congress has questions about complex topics like derivatives regulation under the Dodd-Frank Banking and Financial Reform Act.

Because Miller comes from the mutual-fund industry, she is viewed as being an advocate for Main Street, not just a denizen of Wall Street -- a political straddle that might satisfy both constituencies.

Another potential candidate is Erskine Bowles, a Clinton Democrat who had been the co-chairman of the president's bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform back in 2010, along with Republican Alan Simpson, the former Wyoming senator.

The commission did produce a fiscal road map -- the Simpson-Bowles plan -- which didn't pass muster with enough of the Democrats and Republicans in Congress to be formally adopted. But the proposal, which calls for higher taxes and entitlement reform, retained a certain cachet with centrists from both political parties. It's viewed today as a starting point for serious negotiations.

Bowles, who long ago was an investment banker, served as Clinton's chief of staff. He has the financial knowledge and political skills needed for the Treasury job.

Another name that has cropped up is that of Neal S. Wolin, deputy secretary of the Treasury. Wolin had been the president and chief operating officer of the property and casualty insurance companies of the Hartford Financial Services Group. Prior to that, he served under Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Wolin was a key architect of the Dodd-Frank legislation.

One big drawback for Wolin: Dodd-Frank, which mandated major changes in financial-services regulation, is very unpopular among Republicans, many of whom feel it was jammed down their throats when Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate. So, Wolin's nomination could spark a huge confirmation fight.

OF COURSE, OBAMA COULD turn conventional wisdom on its head and pick a Wall Street giant as Treasury chief -- someone of such gravitas that it would come as a positive surprise to global markets. The logical choice would be BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink. An Obama supporter, he runs the world's largest asset-management company, overseeing $3.7 trillion.

Fink has been on Barron's list of the world's top corporate CEOs every year since 2005. BlackRock was one of the few financial firms not poked full of holes by the financial collapse. In fact, it helped the government deal with Bear Stearns, American International Group, and Citigroup.

Fink regularly gets calls seeking fiscal and economic advice from Geithner, members of Congress, and financial leaders from around the globe.

The BlackRock boss told a questioner at a Goldman Sachs conference last week that he's happy in his job and that his possible candidacy as Treasury secretary is a myth. Footnote: Following the conference, he sat down to dinner with seven U.S. senators.

Editor's Note:An earlier version of this story mischaracterized Tyson's ties to Wall Street.